adopted on July 2nd was calculated to consolidate the support of all sections of the party. It called, inter alia, for downward revision of the tariff; anti-trust legislation; the institution of Presidential primaries (i.e. the expression by each voter in the party of his personal preference instead of the existing nominations by conventions of delegates); a federal income-tax; publicity of campaign contributions; restriction of a President's tenure to a single term ; rural credits; free passage through the Panama Canal for coastwise shipping; conservation of national resources; independence for the Philippines “as soon as a stable Government can be established."

A Party Convention in America is an institution sui generis. Its main business is to formulate a platform and adopt a candidate. It is composed of a specified number of delegates from each State, and one of the first duties of the Committee on Credentials, appointed at the beginning of the Convention, is to scrutinize the claims of the rival delegations in cases where a party division in a State has resulted in the dispatch to the Convention of two sets of delegates. When those preliminaries have been settled, and extravagant speeches of nomination have been duly enunciated and elaborately applauded by each potential candidate's supporters, the solid business of balloting is taken in hand.

The first day or two devoted to that process is of little account. While there are usually three or four outstanding candidates, on one of whom the final choice is certain to fall,

every Convention produces a crowd of secondary runners, most of them "favourite sons," men prominent in local politics but unknown outside their own State. The effect of the running of a number of candidates is a wide scattering of votes on the early ballots, making it extremely unlikely that any one of the candidates will in the first instance obtain the total necessary for election, a two-thirds majority being required in a Democratic Convention and a bare majority in a Republican. The voting therefore proceeds towards a decision through the gradual transference of support in the successive ballots from the candidates at the bottom to one of the two or three at the top, a manœuvre stimulated by assiduous solicitation and bargaining on the part of the bosses running the candidates high on the list.

At Baltimore the more prominent nominees included Governor Woodrow Wilson, of New Jersey; Governor Harmon, of Ohio; and Champ Clark, of Missouri, Speaker of the House of Representatives. The voting on the early ballots favoured Clark, who ran head for some time, actually commanding a clear majority of the Convention (though not the necessary two-thirds) on eight separate votes. He failed to hold his position and Mr. Wilson's total was steadily rising, when Mr. Bryan, whose influence with the advanced wing of the party was great, threw his support on to Mr. Wilson's side. On the forty-sixth ballot Wilson was chosen Democratic candidate for the November contest. It must be put on solemn record that when Governor Wilson was first nomi

nated early in the Convention his name was cheered for one hour and fifteen minutes, as against one hour and five minutes of applause for Mr. Champ Clark. Both candidates, however, had a less enthusiastic reception than that accorded to Mr. Bryan in the 1908 Convention, when voices, feet, and arms saluted him for one hour and twenty-seven minutes on end.

By the first week in August Mr. Wilson had in the field against him the official Republican nominee, President William H. Taft, and Mr. Roosevelt, running as a Progressive. There was little prospect of Mr. Roosevelt's election. He had served practically the whole of two Presidential terms, and no candidate had ever so far triumphed over the fixed sentiment against a third term as to secure himself twelve years of office. The result of the split he effected in the Republican Party by detaching the radical wing and creating a new "Progressive Progressive" organization could only be to ensure Mr. Taft's defeat as well as his own.

The cleavage is to be attributed to no single cause. Personality had had a good deal to do with it. Mr. Taft was an able and upright President, but he inspired no enthusiasm. He had, moreover, alienated important interests by his attitude on the tariff and on Canadian Reciprocity. His predecessor and opponent with a restless and quixotic temper combined a genuine enthusiasm for social reform-provided it followed his own prescribed formula-which gained him a considerable following among the more

advanced sections of the old Republican Party. The Progressive platform was a curious amalgam of the Republican and the Democratic. Mr. Taft stood on his own record as President, reinforced by a programme of trust prosecution, currency reform, conservation, and a strong Navy. The Progressives, meeting in Convention at Chicago after both the Republicans and the Democrats, issued a voluminous statement demanding extensive ameliorative action by the Central Government and the fullest measure of direct popular control over election and legislation.

Mr. Wilson, in his acceptance speech to the delegation that conveyed a formal intimation of his choice by the Convention, substantially endorsed the Convention platform (though, as his subsequent action showed, he did not hold himself bound by it), and emphasized in particular the need of so directing the currency reform measures as to consult the interests of farmers and merchants as well as bankers, and of "setting up the rule of justice and right in respect of such matters as the tariff, control of trusts, and labour legislation."

The four months intervening between the earlier Conventions and the elections at the beginning of November were devoted to the usual oratorical tours throughout the Union. Mr. Wilson's campaign speeches, their permanent value emphasized by the excision of passages of purely ephemeral importance, have been preserved in the volume edited by Mr. W. B. Hale, and entitled The New Freedom.

As the campaign

ran its course it became increasingly clear that the Democratic candidate had victory in sight, though the abortive attempt of demented Socialist to assassinate Mr. Roosevelt at Milwaukee in October gave a momentary impetus to the Progressive canvass.

The procedure followed at a Presidential election is to be ascribed to the attempt of the framers of the American Constitution to place the choice of President in the hands of men of proved integrity and sober judgment, who would select the occupant of the White House under a due sense of responsibility and with minds detached from the turmoil of party politics. Accordingly the election was made indirect. The voters of each State, instead of choosing a President, chose electoral delegates, with whom the selection of a President would rest. The number of delegates was to be equal to that of the State's representation in the Senate and House of Representatives combined. Since every State, great or small, sends two representatives to the Senate, but is represented in the House on the basis of population (from New York, which returns fortythree members, to New Mexico, which returns one), it follows that the electoral college is also chosen on what is practically a population basis. New York has forty-five electoral votes and Pennsylvania thirty-eight, while Delaware, Nevada, Wyoming, and others still stand at the irreducible minimum of three.

The theory of an election uninfluenced by party politics had broken down before the Republic